Cedars Sinai Medical Center

To help relieve overcrowding at the county morgue, pathologists from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center will perform some autopsies for the coroner at the hospital, the Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday. The coroner's office also will train Cedars-Sinai medical residents in forensic pathology, at no cost to the county, according to the agreement. Supervisors authorized the office to make similar arrangements with other hospitals.

Calling hospital errors "heartbreaking," U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on Friday released a report detailing how some California hospitals are reducing medical mistakes that can cause infections, incorrect administration of drugs, falls and other complications. Many medical centers are preventing errors, she said, but others still need to demonstrate they are serious about addressing the problem. According to some researchers, Boxer said, between 210,000 and 440,000 Americans die as a result of medical errors each year -- making medical errors the third leading cause of death in the nation, behind heart disease and cancer.

Singer Barbra Streisand has donated $5 million to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. for a new women's heart center, hospital officials said Wednesday. Among other things, the Barbra Streisand Women's Cardiovascular Research and Education Program will expand research about female cardiovascular disease and raise awareness about it in the community, according to a statement released by Cedars-Sinai.

A former patient at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center accused the hospital of negligence in a lawsuit filed Monday in which she said she was sexually assaulted last year by a certified nursing assistant after she underwent surgery. The woman alleged in the suit that the hospital failed to adequately respond to complaints of sexual assaults involving the same employee dating back more than a decade. In addition, the patient said Cedars-Sinai never interviewed her or made any effort to investigate after she reported the assault to the hospital June 13. Her lawsuit said she made several attempts to speak to someone at Cedars-Sinai before being told that the employee had been fired and that she could report the matter to police if she wanted further action taken.

A multimillion-dollar gift will allow Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to build an eight-story critical-care tower that will replace two buildings destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, hospital officials announced Wednesday. The size of the gift from Suzanne and David Saperstein was undisclosed, but hospital officials said it was larger than a $14-million donation given to Cedars-Sinai in 2002. David Saperstein founded Metro Networks, which produced radio news.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center will open a medical storefront Wednesday at the Beverly Center. Beverly Center marketing director Evette Caceres said the $250,000 Picture Your Health storefront is intended to create a "comfortable environment" that blends into the shopping scene. The storefront will provide testing for breast cancer, osteoporosis and strokes at a lower fee than a visit to Cedars-Sinai, said Joan Herbst, a marketing director for the medical center.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to Reduce Staff: The Los Angeles hospital said it will eliminate 350 positions by Nov. 1, bringing to 700 the number of positions that it has slashed this year. Ron Wise, hospital spokesman, said the medical center will try to accomplish the reductions by not filling current or future job openings, but some layoffs will also be necessary. Wise also said the hospital is re-evaluating a planned $300-million expansion of the medical center.

In a departure from tradition, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has become one of a handful of private hospitals not affiliated with universities to seek to patent new discoveries by staff researchers. While many universities have had such a policy for years--mostly for nonmedical discoveries--few medical researchers have sought to file patents on their work.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is about to embark on a major expansion, adding a 1,900-space parking structure and four buildings to its already crowded grounds in an effort to come to terms with changing demands for medical service.

The Los Angeles Planning Commission on Thursday approved the construction of a tower at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and rezoned a vacant Westwood lot so that it can become a city park. Cedars-Sinai received approval for a 200,000-square-foot expansion that will include 100 new patient beds and 700 parking spaces.

A patient who claims she was sexually assaulted by a nursing assistant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center while she was heavily medicated described a feeling of helplessness when the alleged crime occurred. "It's devastating," she said, to be victimized "when you're incapacitated and not yourself and weak and scared. " The Times generally does not name alleged victims in sex crime cases. Authorities are now investigating allegations the nursing assistant, who has since been fired, sexually assaulted two patients while they were heavily medicated and too weak to resist, according to court records and interviews.

A nursing assistant who worked at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is under investigation for allegedly sexually assaulting two patients while they were heavily medicated and too weak to resist, according to court records and interviews. The women came forward separately last year and gave Los Angeles police similar accounts about how a male employee assaulted them while they were being treated at the hospital. Detectives served a search warrant at Cedars-Sinai earlier this year to obtain disciplinary records for Guillermo Fernando Diaz, a nursing assistant who had been assigned to a heart patient area.

Authorities are looking into whether the brakes failed on a large truck in Beverly Hills on Friday before a collision with a Los Angeles police squad car, killing one officer and seriously injuring another. The officers were crossing through Beverly Hills en route to an "unknown trouble call" when the crash occurred about 8 a.m. near Loma Vista Drive and Robert Lane, officials said. Speaking to reporters outside Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck declined to provide details about the circumstances leading up to the crash, citing the ongoing investigation, but called it a "catastrophic" collision with a trash hauler.

Starting today, you will have to wear a surgical mask if you want to visit patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as the hospital puts in place new measures to guard against the spread of influenza. Other local hospitals are also taking precautions because they fear the illness is growing worse in Los Angeles County, even as cases have begun to decline elsewhere in the state. Here are some other things you need to know about this season's flu: How bad is it? Pretty bad. So far, California has recorded 95 flu-related deaths in people under age 65. Health officials say it's likely another 51 deaths were also due to flu, but they're still checking out those cases.

Despite a statewide drop in reported influenza cases, Los Angeles hospitals are preparing for this year's season to worsen in the coming weeks, fearful of the deadly H1N1 "swine flu" virus strain that is to blame for most of this year's flu deaths. H1N1 killed thousands of people around the world in 2009. That has hospitals worried about the spread of the illness, especially since California's flu deaths this year have dramatically outpaced last year's at this time. Dr. Rekha Murthy, epidemiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said that starting Monday the hospital will require that visitors wear masks - whether or not they're sick - and that patients see only two visitors at a time.

Police detained a woman for questioning Friday evening after two men were shot and wounded in a Hollywood apartment building. Shortly before 5 p.m., police were called to the building in the 1600 block of North Fuller Avenue just south of Hollywood Boulevard. Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Richard Gabaldon said one man suffered a graze wound to the head and the other was shot three times in the leg and torso. Both were taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and were in stable condition, he said.

The toddler with the blazing fever? Ibuprofen. The elderly man having trouble breathing? A gurney, stat. The fledgling chef whose hand got mangled in a Cuisinart? Bandage. What about the dozens of other waiting-room patients in varying degrees of misery, each with medical histories and vital signs to take, frightened family members in need of soothing, and always the same pointed question: How long before I see a doctor?

Daniel Harberts, a 4-year-old who underwent a rare and complicated operation Thursday in which most of his cancerous liver was removed, was recovering Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "As far as we know at this time the surgery was successful," said Ron Wise, spokesman for the medical center. "There is a great deal of optimism." After the eight-hour surgery, Daniel was easily weaned from the respirator, the hospital reported.

Two nationally known sports medicine groups have agreed to partner with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on a new orthopedic center. The Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic and the Santa Monica Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Group said Monday they will work with Cedars-Sinai on a new Institute for Sports Sciences. Under this collaboration, all three parties said they would continue to see patients at their current locations. Kerlan-Jobe and the Santa Monica medical group already care for professional sports teams and many high-profile athletes and Hollywood stars.